Catholic Ragemonkey

Dreaming of 42nd Street

I have had, for most of my life, a love affair with New York City. You know the place. Manhattan. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. Last night, as I was driving to one of my mission parishes for weekday Mass and class, Joe Jackson's Steppin' Out came on the satellite radio. I listened with a double nostalgia: one for the early days of MTV before it became a cesspool and two for my time in Manhattan.

You see, when I was in seminary in Philly, I got to indulge my love for NYC with occasional visits. Walking the wild streets, visiting St. Patrick's (even assisting with the Holy Mass there), seeing all those things which seemed like a dream for a little boy in the Midwest. In a certain sense, Manhattan is my Oz (think Frank Baum and not a prison series). It is a place where the unexpected and the magical converge as taxicabs wink eyes at you as they pass by.